Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  
Pages: 1 ... 31 32 [33] 34 35 ... 39

Author Topic: (KSP LP) Bay12 Space Program: Conical Difficulties  (Read 71804 times)

GreatWyrmGold

  • Bay Watcher
  • Sane, by the local standards.
    • View Profile
Re: (KSP LP) Bay12 Space Program: I Hate Bugs
« Reply #480 on: April 08, 2014, 03:33:45 pm »

FINALLY, we're ready to...what, re-re-restart?


Alright. I believe we were doing a Minmal flight?
Anyways. Yeah, here's the rocket:


Possibly the biggest rocket I've ever made. Not counting the ones that were too big to reach orbit and/or not fall apart.
...KW Rocketry, that's the mod I forgot!


The bottom stage is a single massive "Poodle" engine, with eight smaller boosters (LV-T30's) which also put extra fuel in the main tank. Efficiency! This will give us more than enough Δv to land on Minmus and return, with science gathered. Whoo! Jeb is, of course, flying this mission.
I almost forget any kind of power thingy, but then I remember. I hope they don't fall off or something.

That bottom stage gives tons of thrust! I engage in the typical tug-o-throttle between "slowing down" and "exceeding the sound barrier". The boosters run out at ~11,000 meters; the Poodle alone isn't strong enough to keep my speed up...until some fuel burns off, and we're good by 14,000 meters. Next time, though, we probably shouldn't have the fuel lines going in like that...
Okay, I notice something bad. We're picking up speed, but losing altitude. Okay...yeah, reverting. Deleting fuel lines. Relaunching.

That isn't enough. I replace the Poodle with a stronger Skipper.
We take off fast, with a TWR of nearly three. Even with half throttle, we're increasing speed rapidly. By 5,000 meters, I can reduce it to a third of full thrust while still (slowly) gaining velocity. I'm doing so, by the way, to avoid wasting Δv fighting against Kerbin's thick lower atmosphere--a useful little trick.


A so-far-successful flight...and it looks like it'll continue to be that way!

I discover around 15 kilometers altitude (five after my gravity turn) makes the craft roll and hard to control. Does the Skipper have no gimbal?


I seem to be able to control my craft (clumsily), so it must have some...

I push the apoapsis up to 76 kilometers before the Skipper runs out of fuel. I set up a quick maneuver node, and am surprised to see a time guesser. I am less surprised to see it jump from 0:18 to 2:23 when I actually turn on the engine, thankfully a bit before the node, unthankfully only forty-odd seconds. Prograde burn, watching the periapsis tick up. We start falling, but the periapsis is only a few dozen kilometers underground. Then we start rising?!? Weird. I shut off the engines with periapsis at 75k, apoapsis 88k. 1% eccentricity, pretty circular. Seven and a half minutes to LKO, now to Minmus.


But first, a pretty picture.

We are just about at the right point for a good Minmal approach, so we'll need to orbit once to get there. As always, the maneuver nodes throw up some amusing intermediate stages.


Ooh, a Munar grav-assist!

I use MechJeb's maneuver node editor tool once I prograded close, and quickly get an encounter.


Yes! Go MechJeb!

I add little shifts to radial-out and normal, then prepare for the burn, predicted to take...about three minutes. On a side note, Kerbal Alarm Clock is doing well.


Pictures are always nice.

Pictures of rockets maneuvering? Nice, and rare too.

Mid-maneuver orbital stuff? Even rarer.


Those last couple dozen m/s are some of the most important, perhaps unsurprisingly. Anyways, less than 40 minutes into the mission, Jeb is looking at just over a nine-day wait to reach Minmal influence.


The second half is the slowest.
...Pay no attention to the flag!


Anyways, we set up a capture maneuver once we get there.


Shouldn't take long;, two seconds is the predicted burn time.

The two moons of Kerbin.


I forget to turn towards the node until right beforehand. I decide to ignore the node, turn retrograde (which I am almost exactly the exact wrong way for), and watch the Orbit Information window for when we get fully captured. It's painfully slow; I should have added some reaction wheels. As it happens, I put the maneuver node before periapsis, so overall it's not too terrible.
I turn on the throttle as we approach the right angle, letting gimbal help. Before long, we have an orbit! It's 1.85 by 1.1 megameters, and apoapsis is in an hour or two. We burn to reduce periapsis to under 15 kilometers above the surface.
We burn. There are two odd things that come up.


Three, if you count Ike smugly sitting in the corner there.

One: I overshoot a little and end up suborbital. Basically, I'm falling at Minmus. Two: We're getting a radio signal from the location noted by the flag icon.

Quote from: Signal
Nomowb! Nomowb! Nepboman, nepboman! Mhe hyxeh cnacehne!

Clearly, something worth investigating. But...should we?
Logged
Sig
Are you a GM with players who haven't posted? TheDelinquent Players Help will have Bay12 give you an action!
[GreatWyrmGold] gets a little crown. May it forever be his mark of Cain; let no one argue pointless subjects with him lest they receive the same.

SOLDIER First

  • Bay Watcher
  • Trans fucking rights, baby.
    • View Profile
Re: (KSP LP) Bay12 Space Program: Minmus and a Foreign Signal
« Reply #481 on: April 08, 2014, 03:49:53 pm »

Yes.
Logged
Black lives matter.

GreatWyrmGold

  • Bay Watcher
  • Sane, by the local standards.
    • View Profile
Re: (KSP LP) Bay12 Space Program: Minmus and a Foreign Signal
« Reply #482 on: April 08, 2014, 04:30:52 pm »

Oh hey, someone other than BigD.
Logged
Sig
Are you a GM with players who haven't posted? TheDelinquent Players Help will have Bay12 give you an action!
[GreatWyrmGold] gets a little crown. May it forever be his mark of Cain; let no one argue pointless subjects with him lest they receive the same.

WillowLuman

  • Bay Watcher
  • They/Them Life is weird
    • View Profile
Re: (KSP LP) Bay12 Space Program: Minmus and a Foreign Signal
« Reply #483 on: April 08, 2014, 04:34:11 pm »

Clearly the aliens are responsible for the asteroids as well.
Logged
Dwarf Souls: Prepare to Mine
Keep Me Safe - A Girl and Her Computer (Illustrated Game)
Darkest Garden - Illustrated game. - What mysteries lie in the abandoned dark?

BigD145

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: (KSP LP) Bay12 Space Program: Minmus and a Foreign Signal
« Reply #484 on: April 08, 2014, 04:35:20 pm »

Yes.

Clearly the aliens are responsible for the asteroids as well.

*HISS* Get out. Mine!

Oh hey, someone other than BigD.
Logged

MarcAFK

  • Bay Watcher
  • [INSANITY INTENSIFIES]
    • View Profile
Re: (KSP LP) Bay12 Space Program: Minmus and a Foreign Signal
« Reply #485 on: April 08, 2014, 05:30:48 pm »

Yes! Send a probe.
By that I mean, send a Kerbal over there to poke it like we do with strange goo and other stuff we don't know about.
Logged
They're nearly as bad as badgers. Build a couple of anti-buzzard SAM sites marksdwarf towers and your fortress will look like Baghdad in 2003 from all the aerial bolt spam. You waste a lot of ammo and everything is covered in unslightly exploded buzzard bits and broken bolts.

GreatWyrmGold

  • Bay Watcher
  • Sane, by the local standards.
    • View Profile
Re: (KSP LP) Bay12 Space Program: Minmus and a Foreign Signal
« Reply #486 on: April 09, 2014, 05:41:53 pm »

After a few days of time-accelerated flight, we're under a hundred thousand meters above Minmus and about ten minutes from impact (assuming no changes).


I quicksaved.

You may notice that the target isn't near the flag anymore. I plan a maneuver to bring us into a real orbit.


No more crashing!

It's predicted to take about two seconds, but--of course--we're facing the wrong way. (Just once, I'd like to be pointing the right way for these burns in low-torque vehicles.) I cave and give a little thrust for gimbal, hoping that doesn't screw this up too much and thankful that I quicksaved. Eventually, as we turn, the estimated burn time goes down. I head to map view, to check out our expected trajectory. For a while, we're on a suborbital hyperbolic orbit, not a combination you hear often.
As we approach the node's orientation, I increase throttle. Once we're there, having managed about half of the estimated burn, I turn off the engine, planning to do the rest at the node's time. I don't even let us get much past periapsis before we head for the place.


I realized I should have probably burned AT periapsis right after I got that perfect. Screw it, we've got...two kilometers per second of Δv.

I wait, letting the Smart A.S.S. do its magic, when with horror I check the resources...no electric charge. Didn't I put solar panels on this?


No. No, I did not. Stupid mistake...

Plan: Wait for us to point at the node, then time-accelerate. Hell if I know how the landing will work, though...


Not that I have much time to worry about it.

The burn takes several times longer than predicted, so I'm not expecting our path to be...ideal in any way.


It could be worse. Probably.

Seven minutes to impact. One quicksave.
I burn a little to gimbal more towards retrograde, because I'm an idiot who forgot his solar panels. This will screw up our approach in some direction. I don't terribly care.
We're still a few minutes out. I deploy the three landing legs I put on this thing, because...well...no reason not to, eh?

I start burning a few kilometers up. Of course, retrograde and down moved, so I'm burning a little to gimbal towards what I hope is the right way. Around 1.7 kilometers above the ground, we're above the horizon and falling down at 50 m/s (and sideways at 116), so I start increasing throttle, hoping to accelerate spinning and slow falling. It's...working as well as one could hope. Which isn't well. Retrograde is moving away faster than I can gimbal towards it, which means that sooner or later I'm going to be speeding up my movement! Already, I'm increasing my horizontal speed (though decreasing my vertical).

We're 141 meters up, falling at 35 m/s, moving sideways at 50. Still burning, trying to reduce my velocity.


I was pointing about 90 degrees from the right direction. Brilliant!

Well, that's what quicksaves are for.

This time, I think I'll I'll try burning the whole way down, trying to point towards retrograde. For most of it, at least. I re-quicksave a couple minutes later, about 9.5 kilometers above the ground.
I get an idea. I have the SASS start pointing us towards up...then turn it off, then turn off the engines. We're still spinning. I do the same with retrograde once we're pointing more up than down. 3.6 kilometers up, I throttle up and turn the SASS back on. It's...working pretty well, actually. (I do, however, note with amusement that we're burning just about exactly away from our target.)


Seriously, look at that!

Once our horizontal speed is down to 5 m/s, it goes back up to 7 before I cut power. Crap, I hadn't meant to post this, just wait.
Logged
Sig
Are you a GM with players who haven't posted? TheDelinquent Players Help will have Bay12 give you an action!
[GreatWyrmGold] gets a little crown. May it forever be his mark of Cain; let no one argue pointless subjects with him lest they receive the same.

GreatWyrmGold

  • Bay Watcher
  • Sane, by the local standards.
    • View Profile
Re: (KSP LP) Bay12 Space Program: Oops
« Reply #487 on: April 09, 2014, 06:11:02 pm »

Alright, let's finish this update. I try to have the SASS point us upwards, but the spinning's too much. We've got over two and a half kilometers to fall, are moving sideways at over 15 m/s, and can't stop our downward movement. Time for Plan Crazy.


Shown: A crappily fast screenshot of the execution of Plan Crazy.

The EVA packs don't have as much thrust, or any instrumentation, but at least they'll be pointed the right frakking way to try and help.
It works so well that I start rising! Whoops, cutting power. At least our trajectory has us closer to moving towards a flat place.

The rocket unloads before it can explode, sadly. Nothing to do now but wait.


That's right, we're going even FARTHER from the target. I am best EVA guy.

We start falling at almost 8500 standard Minmal altitude. Man, what I wouldn't give for something that gives my kerbonauts basic instrumentation.


Previous Minmal landings have suggested that Minmus is not as soft as pudding.

I glance at Map View and notice that the ground is coming up pretty fast. I switch back and try to slow myself...


Note to self: Splatter is at a bit above 4,000 km.

I also notice that Jeb doesn't seem to be quite straight up-and-down. My attempts at slowing his fall may be accelerating his...crawl? I fix this with a button-tap, intended to help slow down both ways, then notice I'm going up again. Better than splatting. And this time, I only go up a dozen meters instead of...two kilometers, maybe?
I work more on slowing down. Visually, at an estimated ~2.5 km above the ground, I'm just falling. Good enough for now. Time-warp proves me wrong, though, and when better to correct horizontal motion then when you're not panicking about falling?
Estimates 1.5 km up. We're falling worrisomely fast, time to slow that.
Guessing we're a few hundred meters up from last "landing," but I think maybe the burns I've been doing this time changed things. Maybe. No bets. I'm not taking the risk.
We reach the previous crashing altitude.


And yet we're falling...what could it mean?

Seems we're falling into that lovely little sea there. This is...annoying. I'm on a tight schedule at the moment, and I don't want to wait in the middle of a flight.

On the other hand, it would make a hell of a cliffhanger. And I do want to get to that exam with time to spare.


...Ten more minutes.

3,000 meters above Minmal sea level. Slowing descent again. Trying not to do it too much.
1,500. Slowing again. Not much.
900. Slowing more. Pretty sure I'm coming in straight down.
500. Again.
250. Guess. I actually stop myself falling for a bit.
130.
90. I can see my shadow.
65.
40. Just a little.
30. More.
0. I land.


"I gotta do WHAT tomorrow?!?"
Logged
Sig
Are you a GM with players who haven't posted? TheDelinquent Players Help will have Bay12 give you an action!
[GreatWyrmGold] gets a little crown. May it forever be his mark of Cain; let no one argue pointless subjects with him lest they receive the same.

MarcAFK

  • Bay Watcher
  • [INSANITY INTENSIFIES]
    • View Profile
Re: (KSP LP) Bay12 Space Program: Oops
« Reply #488 on: April 09, 2014, 06:55:05 pm »

Ice skating!
Edit:
What is minmus's sea made of? Is it frozen methane? kethane damnit iphone autocorrect.
Either way, ew.
« Last Edit: April 09, 2014, 07:00:06 pm by MarcAFK »
Logged
They're nearly as bad as badgers. Build a couple of anti-buzzard SAM sites marksdwarf towers and your fortress will look like Baghdad in 2003 from all the aerial bolt spam. You waste a lot of ammo and everything is covered in unslightly exploded buzzard bits and broken bolts.

GreatWyrmGold

  • Bay Watcher
  • Sane, by the local standards.
    • View Profile
Re: (KSP LP) Bay12 Space Program: Oops
« Reply #489 on: April 09, 2014, 08:22:15 pm »

Edit:
What is minmus's sea made of? Is it frozen methane? kethane damnit iphone autocorrect.
Either way, ew.
Well, it's frozen. We don't have kethane scanners on Jeb, nor did we have them on the rocket, so we can't check to see what the seas are made of.



Some screenshots for some background I'm planning on elaborating tomorrow. See, I wanted to go all-in on the plot this time because of the lukewarm reception my half-plot got. Also, I began rewatching Macey's Spirit of Kerbin videos a bit before the restart, so I wanted to have an excuse to make some fighters and such.

Spoiler: Maps (click to show/hide)
Logged
Sig
Are you a GM with players who haven't posted? TheDelinquent Players Help will have Bay12 give you an action!
[GreatWyrmGold] gets a little crown. May it forever be his mark of Cain; let no one argue pointless subjects with him lest they receive the same.

Aseaheru

  • Bay Watcher
  • Cursed by the Elves with a title.
    • View Profile
Re: (KSP LP) Bay12 Space Program: Oops
« Reply #490 on: April 09, 2014, 08:35:30 pm »

So, where can Stone go in with all that? (besides SPAAACE)
Logged
Highly Opinionated Fool
Warning, nearly incapable of expressing tone in text

WillowLuman

  • Bay Watcher
  • They/Them Life is weird
    • View Profile
Re: (KSP LP) Bay12 Space Program: Oops
« Reply #491 on: April 09, 2014, 08:42:18 pm »

Ah, man I hate it when people try to have Kerbal wars :(

The Kerbals never struck me as the geopolitics kind.
Logged
Dwarf Souls: Prepare to Mine
Keep Me Safe - A Girl and Her Computer (Illustrated Game)
Darkest Garden - Illustrated game. - What mysteries lie in the abandoned dark?

Aseaheru

  • Bay Watcher
  • Cursed by the Elves with a title.
    • View Profile
Re: (KSP LP) Bay12 Space Program: Oops
« Reply #492 on: April 09, 2014, 08:43:19 pm »

Who said the wars where for kerbin?

We have all these asteroids to fight over.
Logged
Highly Opinionated Fool
Warning, nearly incapable of expressing tone in text

WillowLuman

  • Bay Watcher
  • They/Them Life is weird
    • View Profile
Re: (KSP LP) Bay12 Space Program: Oops
« Reply #493 on: April 09, 2014, 08:56:27 pm »

Who said the wars where for kerbin?

We have all these asteroids to fight over.

That's still a Kerbal war, because Kerbals are fighting.
Logged
Dwarf Souls: Prepare to Mine
Keep Me Safe - A Girl and Her Computer (Illustrated Game)
Darkest Garden - Illustrated game. - What mysteries lie in the abandoned dark?

Aseaheru

  • Bay Watcher
  • Cursed by the Elves with a title.
    • View Profile
Re: (KSP LP) Bay12 Space Program: Oops
« Reply #494 on: April 09, 2014, 09:13:25 pm »

its not really geopolitical...
Most of the combatants being corporations normally.
Logged
Highly Opinionated Fool
Warning, nearly incapable of expressing tone in text
Pages: 1 ... 31 32 [33] 34 35 ... 39